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With the possibility Rashard Mendenhall might not play this week (I think he will) because of his toe injury, I’ve heard plenty of questions about Ryan Williams and his status. Bottom line, if Mendenhall is healthy enough to be active Sunday, I don’t see why the running back situation would change – and that would mean Williams would be inactive again.

I asked Bruce Arians about Williams today. “Working his tail off and getting better,” Arians said. “Making up for that lost time. I have no doubt when he gets his opportunity, which he will, he’ll do extremely well with it.”

Many have asked if Williams could be traded (never say never, but as of now, I’d doubt it.) I get that. Many have also wondered why the Cards just don’t release Williams. That I don’t get. If you feel like he can play a little, and he’s a former second-round pick, why just let him go? At this point, they don’t feel he deserves to be active over the top four guys – and again, I see that as a special teams thing as much as anything – but if someone gets hurt, he’s a nice backup plan to have.

OK, with that out of the way, here are some end-of-the-week notes heading into New Orleans weekend:

— The Cardinals have a lot of players heading back to familiar stomping grounds in Louisiana thanks to the LSU pipeline, but Arians has worked hard to limit the distraction. “This,” former LSU star Patrick Peterson said, “is a business trip.” A business trip in which the Cards don’t even get to their hotel until close to 7 p.m. and have a noon game the next day, so there will be very little time for anything but football.

— Given how important this trip is to Tyrann Mathieu, going home and everything, it’s hard not to think he’ll make some sort of big play Sunday. Then again, predicting Mathieu is going to make an impact play isn’t exactly going out on a limb.

— The Saints are just a different team now that Sean Payton is back as head coach after his year-suspension for the bountygate scandal.

“As a head coach, you oversee everything, so I think we missed that the most,” quarterback Drew Brees said. “There are just certain messages that I think only he can convey in his way.”

— Of course, it also helps that Rob Ryan has rehabbed a wretched defense. It wasn’t as if the Saints were bad last year offensively. But defensively, yikes. The one good thing for the Cards? They don’t really have a major pass rusher (although Valley native Cameron Jordan is off to a good start). The Saints also might have some injury issues. Their injury report is loooong, and one of the guys who might miss is guard Jahri Evans, which would be a big deal.

— Rookie running back Andre Ellington had his 36-yard touchdown catch last week and he should have had one in the first game. Someone asked Carson Palmer if Ellington was developing into one of his favorite receivers. There was a little bit of a “Come on, man” answer from Palmer.

“I like the kid, but I have some other guys,” Palmer said. “Number 12 (Roberts), number 11 (Fitz) and number 15 (Floyd), those are my favorite guys to throw to. I would love it if Andre worked his way into that group, but it’s going to take some time and some trust you have to develop. He’s very talented. He’s a tailback and those guys are receivers and there are a lot of differences between the two. I definitely like throwing the ball to those receivers.”

— I just realized, typing that quote, that none of the Cards’ main three receivers have a classic number-in-the-80s jersey. I’d have to look, but I bet no other team has their top three guys in the teens, jersey-number-wise. (As @jrleko points out on Twitter, all five receivers have numbers in the teens, with Jaron Brown at 13 and Kerry Taylor 18. That’s got to be an NFL-first.)

— Justin Bethel’s field-goal block was the Cardinals’ 15th since 2008, most in the NFL in that time span.

— Lions defensive tackle Israel Idonije was fined $15,750 for his hit on Palmer in last weekend’s game.

— Peterson was talking about how much the Saints are loved and he recalled being at LSU when the Saints won the Super Bowl. “I was there when the Saints won their first championship,” Peterson said. “It was like Christmas, every day.”

The punishments for the New Orleans Saints — at least most of them, since the player punishments are still TBD — came down Wednesday and they provided the expected doozy: A year-long suspension without pay for Saints coach Sean Payton, an indefinite suspension for former DC Gregg Williams of at least a year, and an eight-game ban for general manager Mickey Loomis.

Obviously this isn’t about the Cardinals, although there are parts of this that do impact the Cards:

— To begin with, the Cardinals will be the first team to play the Saints, since the teams will match up Aug. 5 in the Hall of Fame game to kick off the preseason. Wonder what the talking points will be during that broadcast? You wonder if the Cards are just going to be in the background, because it’s hard to see the Saints’ storylines not dominating.

— The Saints lose second-round picks this year and next. That’ll move up the Cards’ third-round pick a slot sooner. We’ll see what it means in 2013.

— Once the regular season begins, the Cards know that Williams, who had since been hired as the Rams’ defensive coordinator, won’t be around. Williams may never be around in St. Louis; commissioner Roger Goodell isn’t assuring anyone that Williams will be reinstated. Not that new head coach Jeff Fisher can’t work around it — former Cards head coach Dave McGinnis, on staff with the Rams now as an assistant head coach, could drop into the DC role like he once did for the Cards. UPDATE: Fisher said the duties won’t go to a permanent DC. He, McGinnis and Chuck Cecil will split the work.

— Then there is the Kurt Warner tie-in. The original investigation sprouted from the way the Saints treated Warner, then the Cards’ QB, and Brett Favre, then with the Vikings, during the playoffs after the 2009 season. The Cards’ playoff game, in fact, was mentioned a couple of times in the NFL’s official release about the punishments, including Warner himself. “The investigation showed bounties being placed on four quarterbacks of opposing teams – Brett Favre, Cam Newton, Aaron Rodgers, and Kurt Warner.”

Warner, appearing on NFL Network Wednesday, had this to say about the punishment: “I’m shocked, like a lot of people, but not fully surprised. … But this is what Commissioner Goodell has done from Day One. And I love he is trying to make statements trying to protect our game for the long-term.”

Added Warner, “To a degree, this has gone on through the history of our game, where guys have gone out to hit guys really hard to knock them out of the game or at least knock them off their game so it affects (the hitting team) in a positive manner. Of course, not to the extent to where you are paying guys to hurt other guys, and I think that’s where this takes a different turn.”

— The NFL also made clear that they won’t let this happen again, sending a memo to all teams directing the owner of every team to meet with the head coach to confirm bounty systems aren’t in place in any other organization. Said the NFL release, “Each principal owner and head coach must certify this in writing to the commissioner by March 30.”